Quantifying spatiotemporal variability of glacier algal blooms and the impact on surface albedo in southwestern Greenland

• Published in: The Cryosphere
• Main Authors: Wang, Shujie, Tedesco, Marco, Alexander, Patrick, Xu, Min, Fettweis, Xavier
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Greenland; The Sentinel; glacier; Ice Sheet; Jakobshavn
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-2687-2020; https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/14/2687/2020/

Albedo reduction due to light-absorbing impurities can substantially enhance ice sheet surface melt by increasing surface absorption of solar energy. Glacier algae have been suggested to play a critical role in darkening the ablation zone in southwestern Greenland. It was very recently found that th...